Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to computerized image storage and retrieval and more particularly to image file meta-data management.
Description of the Related Art
Photography has progressed from a service available only through the efforts of a skilled professional photographer to a hobbyist pursuit. The advent of the digital camera has enabled all comers to enjoy the benefit of photography without engaging in the burdensome film development process requiring a substantial lag in time between the capturing of a photographic image and the viewing of the image in print. Recent developments in digital photography has allowed ordinary consumers to enjoy access to cameras of a power previously only known to professional photographers. Further, advancements in memory technology now permit the capturing of hundreds of images in one sitting without requiring an annoying changing of film.
With the benefit of carefree, seemingly unlimited photography comes the challenge of editing, organizing and storing digital images. Referred to as the “workflow”, for every filled memory card of digital imagery, hundreds of digital images must be retouched and edited including cropped and adjusted for contrast, exposure, saturation, and the like. Further, the images must be properly named and stored in appropriate locations in fixed storage. After only a few digital photography sessions, it will be readily apparent how the context of if not the entirety of an image can be lost upon the photographer and those with whom the photographer otherwise would share the image.
Modern digital photography tools provide image editing functionality, and image classification and storage functionality. Edits to images can be applied permanently to an image subject to processing, or the edits can be stored separately from the original image so as to provide a pathway to retrieve the originally acquired image. In either case, the edits can include the definition or editing of meta-information such as the time and date of acquiring a corresponding image, the photographic settings of an image acquisition device like a camera having acquired the image, and a size of the image.
Even still, despite the modest functionality afforded by digital photography tools, maintaining context and relevant information pertaining to an image can become a much greater challenge when the image is published to different individuals over a computer communications network and subsequently stored. In this circumstance, in the absence of a sophisticated digital image editor, the meta-information will have been lost. Even to the original photographer, unless an edited image is loaded into the image editor processing the meta-information, the meta-information will have been lost—particularly where the image is viewed through a generic viewer such as a Web browser.